Censorship or “filtering” depends on a country’s policies
and its technological infrastructure.
In some countries, there are several entry points for
Internet connectivity, and a handful of private telecommunications companies
[that] control them (with some regulation).
In others, there is only one entry point, a nationalized Internet
service provider (ISP), through which all traffic flows….Differences in
infrastructure…, combined with cultural particularities and objectives of
filtering, account for the patchwork systems around the world today.
In most countries, filtering is conducted at the ISP
level. …governments put restrictions on
the gateway routers that connect the country and on DNS (domain name system)
servers. This allows them to either
block a website altogether or process web content through “deep-packet
inspection.” ….special software allows
the router to look inside the packets of data that pass through it and check
for forbidden words, among other things….. Neither technique is foolproof;
users can access blocked sites with circumvention technologies like proxy
servers (which trick the routers) or by using secure https encryption protocols
(which enable private Internet communication that, at least in theory, cannot
be read by anyone other than your computer and the website you are accessing),
and deep-packet inspection rarely catches every instance of banned content. (p.
84)
The most
sophisticated censorship states invest a great deal of resources to build these
systems, and then heavily penalize anyone who tries to get around them.
A “balkanization of the Internet” national filtering and
other restrictions would transform what was once the global Internet
into a connected series of nation-state networks. The World Wide Web would fracture and fragment….all coexisting
and sometimes overlapping but, in important ways, separate. Each state’s Internet would take on its
national characteristics. Information
would largely flow within countries but not across them, due to filtering,
language or even just user preference….The process would at first be barely
perceptible to users, but it would fossilized over time and ultimately remake
the Internet (For more information read
Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World by Jack
Goldsmith and Tim Wu, 2006). (p. 85)
Three models: the blatant (China), the sheepish Internet
filterers (Turkey), and the politically and culturally acceptable (South Korea,
Germany, Malaysia…). …activists will
pray that the third approach becomes the norm for states around the world, but
this seems unlikely; only countries with highly engaged and informed
popuations will need to be this transparent and restrained. (pp 86-89)
Source:
Schmidt, Eric & Cohen, Jared. (2013). The New
Digital Age—Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business. (Alfred A. Knopf, NY).
